After throwing away the EL to concentrate on the league, Pochettino has no excuse not to win this match. In fact, we have to win all our remaining 9 league matches to have any chance of winning the league. Until last season, we had excellent record against Villa, winning 6 consecutive matches against them in all competitions. But disappointingly, we lost to them at home last season and that cost us the 4th place. So, we cannot let them affect our league title race this season instead. We did well to beat them at home earlier in the season. So, there is no reason why we cannot beat them in this match.
Without any doubt, Kane will be our key player in this match. If we want to win this match, he will needs to score for us ! Afterall, he has scored 2 goals in 3 matches against Villa. In fact, his run of good form for us started against Villa last season when he came from the bench to score the winner in the injury time. Since then he has gone from a fringe player to become our key player. Hope he will become our match winner at Villa again ! Too bad we don't have any other regular goal scorers. Players like Eriksen, Chadli, Son and Lamela really should have scored more league goals this season. But surely, Lamela needs to start this match after not playing much against Dortmund. Pochettino should have realized by now how much important Lamela is to us after the way we almost lost to Arsenal after Lamela was replaced. Lamela seemed fired up when he came on late against Dortmund. Hope he can inspire us to a win here.
It seems a bit complicated in our midfield now due to injuries and yellow cards. Too bad Alli and Dembele seems to be struggling with some injury problems. But hope they are both fit to start this match. Dier seems to be 1 yellow card away from 2 match suspensions. It is really a problem we could do without at this important stage of the season. Some of the yellow cards that Dier picked earlier could have been avoided. He really should be learning how to avoid getting silly yellow cards.
Can't help but a bit worried for our defence. Lloris, Alderweireld and Wimmer have conceded 5 goals in our last 2 matches, including the 3 goals against Dortmund. We could have conceded even more in those 2 matches. We have never conceded more than 2 goals in any other match this season. Not sure how much it will affect our defence mentally. Alderweireld and Wimmer have done well together so far after Vertonghen was injured. But they needs to be more alert in all the matches, especially Wimmer. Will be very disappointed if we don't keep a clean sheet against Villa. Hope we will stop being very generous to struggling teams and players for once !
We are now winless in 3 matches in all competitions. So, we badly need to win this match to get back to winning ways. We need to go on a long winning run to stay in the title race. Hope we will do just that by beating Villa in this match.